Meta Platforms, Inc.

Meta reported Q2 2026 total revenue of $60.8 billion, up 28% year over year, and Family of Apps revenue of $60.4 billion, also up 28%. Family of Apps ad revenue was $59.4 billion, up 27% year over year, and Reality Labs revenue was $431 million, up 16%. Q2 GAAP operating income was $18.8 billion, down 8% year over year, with a 31% operating margin; net income was $15.8 billion, or $6.18 per share. Q2 expenses were $42 billion, up 55%, including $2.4 billion of legal charges and $1.2 billion of severance expenses. Capex, including principal payments on finance leases, was $31.1 billion; free cash flow was $784 million. Cash and marketable securities were $90.3 billion, and debt was $83.7 billion. For Q3 2026, Meta guided to revenue of $61 billion to $64 billion. For full-year 2026, it expects expenses of $165 billion to $169 billion, capex of $130 billion to $145 billion, and operating income above 2025 levels. It also expects the tax rate for the remaining quarters of 2026 to be 15% to 17%.

Mark Zuckerberg framed the quarter as validation that Meta’s AI investments are already lifting the core business, especially recommendations, ads, and content creation tools. He said the company is building toward personal agents, business agents, APIs, and even direct compute sales, but emphasized that Meta’s bigger opportunity is to sell intelligence rather than raw compute. His tone was highly optimistic and expansive, with repeated comments that the opportunity is “massive” and that Meta is well positioned because it can build full-stack and scale products to billions of users.

Susan Li focused on the financial impact of higher AI and infrastructure investment, along with the one-time charges that pressured operating income. She cited Q2 revenue growth of 28%, operating income of $18.8 billion, a 31% margin, net income of $15.8 billion, and capex of $31.1 billion; she also noted $2.4 billion in legal charges and $1.2 billion in severance. On the balance sheet, she pointed to $90.3 billion in cash and marketable securities against $83.7 billion in debt, and she said Meta is using a broader mix of capital sources, including debt and partnerships like the BlackRock venture, to fund long-duration AI infrastructure.

Analysts focused on which AI opportunities could scale first, how Meta plans to finance the build-out, and whether 2027 capex can be pinned down; management declined to give a specific 2027 capex outlook and said planning remains highly dynamic. Questions also centered on enterprise go-to-market, the mix of selling compute versus selling intelligence, and the role of open-source models; Zuckerberg said enterprise is an extension of Meta’s existing business plus new agent/API offerings, and he argued Meta still needs to build its own frontier models rather than rely on open-weight alternatives. Susan Li clarified that the focus on 2026 and 2027 capacity reflects both near-term demand constraints and uncertainty about longer-term supply-chain capacity.